Love Was All That Mattered
by Nakamura Akira
Summary: Weeks after the darklings death Alina has become hopeful that he faked his death. She has left everyone she had once believed to love in search for the man she had fallen for and nothing will stop her. Not even death as it's a constant shadow trying to take hold of her with every step she takes. Alina will do anything to find the man she loves no matter what will happen in the end.


_**I have been working on this for a while but not truly knowing where it would end. Of course I disliked the ending of the books and decided to write my own ending even if it isn't as great as some would have wanted it. I may or may not do one based on A Court of Thorns and Roses and one on A Court of Mist and Fury.**_

 _ **I do not own the characters. I simply own my story.**_

* * *

 _One. Two. Three._

The darkness wasn't the problem.

 _Four. Five. Six._

The man I love is dead.

 _Seven. Eight. Nine._

I killed him.

 _Ten._

The sun no longer held warmth for me and the darkness, the shadows, watched my every move. They haunted my dreams days after the fated day, the day I became nothing but a shell. An empty soul with nothing to live for and I left everyone in search for myself. In search for the man they called the darkling. In my heart I knew I had killed him, that he wasn't coming back but false hope blossomed in my chest. Maybe, just maybe, the grey eyed man had faked his death. That my knife hadn't ended the dark twinkle in his eyes and the fire hadn't consumed him whole.

I returned to nowhere, to a run down home I had once remembered passing by long ago. It contained nothing but a broken chair and bed, here I knew I would spend most of my days until I no longer had to bear the burden of such pain. I wouldn't share it with anyone but him and...and maybe it would kill me. A sharp, always present, pain now burned in my chest but I never complained even though I knew it would someday kill me. The days wore on and my absurd search for a dead man was the only constant thing in my life.

Mal, Nikolai...they all no longer mattered to me like they once did and I felt very little. Very little that I became exactly like the man who I constantly dreamt of and desired. I walked down the solitary roads day after day to come back and fall into a deep sleep, forgetting to eat on occasion when my mind would replay his death. The death I caused and the flames that burned away the perfect features I had and will always love.

I was walking down a new path the next day already searching for that which would never be there, the skies were dark and the threat of rain was evident all around me. It was now a habit of mine to use a stick to walk after a pain ran up my left leg every now and then. The sun wouldn't come out today or tomorrow. I knew it because I felt it, felt the darkness cling to what the appending storm would give them and if I knew darkness, and I do, then that would last for as long as it could hold on. I only bought two days worth of bread before heading back to the run down home and readied myself.

I began covering the windows and door so the rain wouldn't seep in and moved the bed to the farthest corner where darkness reigned and the water had no chance at getting to me. I lay down with the covers wrapped around myself and stared up at nothing. The single candle in the room barely filled the empty space around me with light and it could only remind me of a particular night. "The problem with wanting..." I paused and closed my eyes to remember those soft lips hovering against my jawline and cried out slightly when the memory seemed all too real and my body no longer felt like my own but that of a past self. "is that it makes us weak." I said, the truth of those words shattered my very soul and the man who once said them had been right.

In truth our wants made us weak and that is why I was able to kill him and why his death broke me completely. Another memory came alive in my usually dull mind, the darkling stood beside me now and I looked up at him. This was no longer reality but...a dream? Was I reliving the past or was this just another nightmare? I didn't care. I deserved every single moment of pain these memories would give me but I relished in the fact that the darkling...Aleksander was beside me once more.

"I've seen what you truly are," the darkling spoke, softly and far too quiet for my liking. "and I've never turned away. Can they all say the same Alina? Can they all give you what you truly crave?"

I opened my mouth to speak, the memory was different than what had actually happened. His words were different but they were the truth. Again he was right and I couldn't fight it, I accepted it all and my own fate as well as his own. As I reached up to touch the face of the man who I ended, a bright light took over everything and my eyes fluttered open. I was back in my room but light filtered in through the cracks in the wall and I frowned. "It's supposed to be raining..."I said aloud but shook my head and got out of bed. It surprised me when the pain in both my chest and leg were gone but pinned it on the herbs I had taken a week before.

The day moved slowly and I felt light, like a huge weight had been lifted off my chest and I was no longer suffocating. My hands weren't in a constant state of trembling and my walk was perfect by the time I went out, a new path I hadn't seen before leading into the forest caught my attention and I followed it. The day was bright, almost too bright and the chirping birds around me seemed brighter than usual. It didn't take long for me to find a small lake in the middle of the forest and I didn't question it when I sat under the shade of a tree where the darkness covered me from the warm sun.

"I've been waiting for you a long time, Alina."

My body froze at the sound of the familiar voice and my head turned to see the man I loved standing underneath another tree, his kefta gone leaving him in normal clothes. He looked like any normal man would with a small grin on his perfect face. "Aleksander..." I could barely say his name before I was running to him, deciding that I would no longer hold back and as I wrapped my arms around him the whole world seemed to brighten around us and even the darkness became soft.

"There was a time when you lived in a single moment and I lived in a thousand...it seems as though I have taken up after you. I live in a single moment...waiting for you and here you are. I thought it would take you longer but..." Aleksander paused and his arms wrapped tighter around me as though his next words would crumble everything around us. "I told you we would change the world."

I looked up at him to meet his gray eyes, not truly understanding what he said but accepting it either way. He was here, with me, and no one would ever ruin the moment. No one would tear down what I would easily build up with the darkling and a slight flicker of recognition made me question everything around me for a moment.

"Like calls to like." Aleksander leaned in and pressed his lips to the edge of my mouth erasing all questions that had surfaced and leaving only love in its wake.

"We are one in the same and I won't ever leave you again. Not for anyone and this time we will have what we couldn't have before. No one to bother us when they think you are dead and I disappeared." I leaned in and pressed my lips fully to his, a lovers kiss and so much more. My heart swelled with pride at having the man I loved in my arms and prayed this would be our eternity. A peace we have both earned and will cherish for the rest of our lives as two pieces of one whole, the dark and the light.

Aleksander looked down at me with sad eyes but said nothing for a moment until he leaned in to kiss me once more and whispered against my lips, "What have you come here for Alina? You were young...vibrant and yet you chose a path from which you cannot leave by choosing to follow me."

"I came here to be with the only man who will ever understand me. I looked for you everywhere after I remembered you saying this was the place you would come to...to be free even for a moment. It has been months now and I finally found you. Finally I have you here Aleksander I won't let you go." My voice came out strong and it was laced with nothing but determination. I smiled when his eyes widened and something I had never seen before in his expression came a light.

"I love you Alina." Aleksander said, his eyes filled with love and admiration for me...for me the only one who could understand his pain.

"I love you Aleksander. Not for the not the brilliant boy blessed with too much power...but for the man who saw me for me and loves me even now. After I...stabbed you and watched you burn. Even if you did manage to escape you never deserved what came to you."

"I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but mine." Aleksander said slowly and leaned down to kiss my lips once more with such tenderness that I held onto him tighter. "I said those words to you once and you still loved me even then. You came looking for me until...well you found me even here. I will love you for the rest of eternity. For whatever time we are giving in this new life...this eternal life. I love you beyond understanding and it will remain this way until we are gone but even then I will love you as this love won't ever be destroyed." he paused and gave me crooked smile. "At first I was in love with your power, the power I had waited for for hundreds of years but you were different and I wanted you. Not for the power but for the woman who was and is my equal. I give myself to you as a whole and broken man Alina and I love you, nothing else matters but us."

I felt him wipe away the tears that fell down my cheeks and leaned into his warm touch. "I have seen what _you_ truly are and I am not afraid Aleksander. I love you as the darkling and as the man that was hidden beneath it all." in that moment, from his words and hint and even my own, I truly understood what the word sacrifice meant and where I was. At that point nothing mattered but him and as it would always be. I brought him in closer now, deepening the kiss and eventually we consummated what we couldn't have done before. The grass was soft beneath us, the sun kissed our bare skin and nothing else mattered as nothing but our love would shine through and that was how it would remain for as long as we both remained whole. The dark and the light in love and perfect as it should have always been.

* * *

Mal had remained impatient, not wanting to bother Alina but finally giving in to temptation and finding where she had been staying for over the past few months. It had been nearly a year since she killed the darkling and he had given her enough time alone. Mal wanted nothing more than to have the woman he so claimed to love back in his arms and safe. He knocked on the door repeatedly, needing Alina to answer but nothing came. No one answered the many times he knocked and no sign of Alina remained outside.

A swift shot to the lock and the door opened, it had been dark inside and the little light that the storm clouds had let in lit up the small shack of a home. At first he noticed nothing but the worn down table and a large bed in the corner. The more Mal walked in the more he noticed a figure curled up in the bed, unmoving. "Alina?" he immediately recognized who it was and ran to her, stopping only after he called out to her various times and no response came. Mal felt tears slide down his cheeks as he looked down at Alina who was clutching the burnt pieces of a black kefta, her skin a deathly pale color and as cold as snow.

"I'm so sorry..." he whispered brokenly and laid down beside the lifeless body of the woman he loved and will always love. She had died in her sleep, quick and painless but her legacy would live on. There would be peace amongst everyone now and she hadn't deserved to die alone. Mal cried silently over the life of a once bright woman who had everything to live for, over the broken woman he was barely able to understand, and most of all over the Alina who had loved a man so broken that the darkness around him couldn't even comfort him. In the end nothing was fair but love was all that mattered.

* * *

 _ **So there it is. Please don't hate me for this but this was the only suitable ending I could come up with that would make some sense? I don't know but I had fun writing it and I hope you all like it. Please leave a review, a follow, and such. If you have any questions then please ask away and thank you again.**_

 _ **~Masami Kuran (Addy)**_


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